Dow Jones To Launch Business Portal

On Wednesday, Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ), a name that is synonymous with business, announced that they will launch a new Web portal specifically tailored to the needs of business. The dowjones.com site was unveiled at the company’s annual stockholders meeting in New York, and is scheduled to open for business by the middle of next month.

Dow Jones is the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Barons, and several international business publications, as well as a number of cable TV and Web-based financial services. Among its Web ventures are SmartMoney.com, CNBC.com, and the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, which boasts the largest paid subscription on the Web.

In announcing the new site, Peter Kann, Dow Jones’ chairman and CEO expressed his opinion that, “The large general-interest portal sites aren’t productive for businesspeople. dowjones.com will help Internet users do their jobs better, faster and smarter.”

A Web Hub for Businesspeople

According to the announcement, the new site will allow visitors to search for business articles from over 2,000 sites specifically selected by Dow Jones editors. It will offer a wide array of stock quotes, portfolio management, and charting capabilities without charge. The site will also allow users to have pay-per-view access to financial information from WSJ Interactive and Dow Jones Newswires.

To date, Dow Jones has been one of the few traditional publishing companies that has been able to successfully charge customers for its Web content.

Discussing the free dowjones.com portal and its relation to the company’s fee based Web services, Dow Jones’ Richard Tofel told the E-Commerce Times, “We see them as complementary.” Adding, “We believe that dowjones.com will drive traffic to the [Wall Street Journal] Interactive site.”

In addition to dowjones.com, Mr. Kann also today announced that the Wall Street Journal will produce an original weekly package of articles and information focused on personal finance and careers. The weekly package will be published in the Sunday business sections of major metropolitan newspapers, beginning later this year. Since 1994, the company has provided a similar service for several of Latin America’s top newspapers.

About Dow Jones and Company

Headquartered in New York city, Dow Jones & Company was founded in 1882 and produces several of the world’s most prominent business and financial news and information sources. The company also owns Ottaway Newspapers, Inc., which publishes 19 daily and 15 weekly newspapers in U.S. communities coast to coast.

According to the company, the launch of dowjones.com will be supported by a multi-million dollar advertising and promotional campaign, which will debut next month.